Fred (with whom I often agree these days) wrote:
> And there is also an example of this in the leadership provided by
> Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress in the struggle against
> apartheid. Which, no matter what leftists think, was never likely to be
> or extremely rapidly become the same thing as the struggle for
> socialism. Getting rid of apartheid was a precondition to the struggle
> for socialism, and we are all stronger as a consequence.
Well, South Africa in 1990 was probably more advanced than Russia in
1917 and certainly had a far bigger working class.
The Barnesites had a thoroughly Menshevik approach, separating out the
stages into historic epochs.
The result is an ANC government which is *economically* to the right of
the old apartheid regime and which has been involved in attempting to
defeat the black working class in a way in which the old apartheid
regime could never have hoped to do.
So, yes, it is great that apartheid is gone. But the possibility for a
great deal more existed and was defeated. And that defeat was cheered
for by the US SWP leadership.
The underlying connection of their politics in relation to South Africa,
Ireland, Venezuela, Haiti (and elsewhere) is hostility to the actual
movement and potential of revolutionary workers or workers moving in a
revolutionary direction.
Philip Ferguson